


Untitled

by GasOnMyHands



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe - Tourette's Syndrome, First Meetings, Pre-line up change, Tourette's Syndrome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 08:03:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13267182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GasOnMyHands/pseuds/GasOnMyHands
Summary: A what-if scenario: Tyler has Tourette's Syndrome.Josh and Tyler meet after an awkward run-in at a coffee shop, and Josh is invited to Tyler's next show, a friendship ensues, and also Tyler twitches a lot.





	Untitled

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, my name is Charlie (they/them) and I have tourette's syndrome! I decided to write this story because I wanted more tourette based fics and that was my only motivation. Tourette's is hard to write, so I kind of devised a method? Any action that interuppts dialogue is likely a tic, though that's easy to recognize, however words and sounds written in italics within dialogue, is another way for me to denote tic. Here are some examples:
> 
> “Tourette-” Squeak, “is a neuro-biological disorder-” headshake.  
> "We’re literally just moving things onto stage, _ha-ha, _soundcheck is already done.”__

“Local Ohio University frat party shut down by cops.” Josh’s glazed eyes ran over the headline, not really taking it in. He had opened his laptop with no real intent, connected to the coffee shop’s free wifi, and the Dispatch website had popped up automatically on his screen. Josh wasn’t really sure why such a headline was anywhere near the home page of this website, but it was probably just a lazy plot-starter from the author, so he shrugged it off. The coffee shop was fairly empty, it was a nice hole-in-the-wall, in Josh’s opinion. So, when the door swung open with shrill bell ring and quite some shuffling, he jumped and glanced up at the sudden influx of noise. The man who had just entered felt the stares from the 3 people in the room, glanced up, and gave an apologetic smile, along with a wrinkle of his nose. Josh glanced back down to his laptop, unbothered. Josh looked at the headline again for a moment, sighed, and with nothing else to do, began to read it.

Tyler continued to shuffle into the store, then stopped and stared up at the menu before he had fully approached the counter. As he read his eyes occasionally blinked hard, interrupting his reading. Eventually he made a decision, placed an order, and sat down a few seats to the right of another man staring blankly at his laptop. Suddenly, Tyler’s leg jerked out, kicking the table leg. Again, everyone was staring at him.

“Sorry,” he whispered, rubbing his toe for a moment as he sniffed, this time quite loudly.

Josh was scanning the article: basic frat party, hired a local band that would do it for beer and 50 bucks, got too loud, too fast, and neighbors called the cops. The reporter had somehow managed to get a few pictures of the students hosting the party, from school ID photos. They also had a picture of the band, obviously scanned from a wrinkled, poorly designed flyer. It was only 3 guys, and one of them looked vaguely familiar. Josh glanced up to the man who had sat nearby him, and then back down the photo. Yep, that was him. Josh deemed this mildly interesting, and then got up to get more sugar for his coffee. As he passed, the man’s head jerked to the side, throwing him off-balance. He caught himself on his chair very quickly, as though he was expecting it.

“Whoa, you ok?” Josh said reflexively.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry,” Tyler said, sitting back up and curling in on himself.

“No problem, man,” Josh replied, quickly moving on. As Josh returned to his seat, he saw that the man had received his coffee, but was ignoring it in favor of peering over at Josh’s laptop screen.

“Did they escort you out in handcuffs?” Josh joked, as he sat back down, moving the screen so that it was easier for the man to read. Tyler blushed and glanced up to meet Josh’s eyes before deliberately averting his gaze from the screen.

“Sorry, I just didn’t realize-” Tyler interrupted himself with a small squeak, to which Josh’s brow furrowed, but he made no comment, “they had written an article about something so silly.” Another squeak, “Must be no good news lately.” Josh chuckled softly.

“Yeah, I guess so.” He paused, “So, no handcuffs?” He asked, one eyebrow raised, again, joking. Tyler giggled.

“No, no handcuffs,” Squeak, “The cops basically just showed up and-” Squeak, “told everyone to shut up and go home.” Squeak, “We only got through a song and a half.” Tyler punctuated his comment with a sharp headshake. Josh had begun to laugh, but at the headshake, he cut himself off.

“Are you ok?” Josh asked, not really sure what was going on. He had been doing his best to ignore the squeaks, assuming Tyler had a cold or something, but the headshake looked a little violent. Tyler looked up and blushed very quickly.

“S-sorry, yeah I’m fine.” He said awkwardly, looking down, and shifting slightly away in his seat. Josh’s face dropped a little.

“Oh, ok.” He said simply, not sure what to do in the now awkward atmosphere. Tyler opened his mouth, paused, and then turned back to Josh.

“It’s called Tourette’s Syndrome,” Tyler paused there, waiting to see recognition on Josh’s face. There was none.

“Oh, uh, what’s that?” Josh was hesitant, but asked anyway, since the information appeared to be volunteered. Tyler sat up straighter and faced Josh fully.

“Tourette-” Squeak, “is a neuro-biological disorder-” headshake, “that causes me to make noises-” tongue-click and blink, “that I can’t control, called tics. They’re completely involuntary and-” chest-punch (Josh winced), “I have to preform them to get rid of the feeling leading up them, or it-” squeak, “just builds and builds until I do them anyway.” Tyler spoke quickly, like he had explained this about a hundred times (He had), “And, as you can see-” Squeak, “it often get worse when I talk about it.” Headshake. Josh sat, stunned.

“Oh, wow. That must be tough,” Josh winced internally, why did he say that? Tyler just laughed.

“Yeah, but I can’t do anything about it, so…” Tyler shrugged, then one shoulder shrugged again, harder. Josh nodded and took a deep breath.

“Well, now that I know all of this about you, what’s your name?” Tyler laughed hard, and Josh joined him.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

               Later that night, Josh crawled into bed and scrolled through his phone. As he checked notification, he saw facebook had some new friend recommendations, one of whom was none other than Tyler. They had exchanged numbers at the coffee shop, and facebook must have found him from Josh’s contact list. He friended the boy, then saw that he was, in fact, online at the moment. Josh glanced up at the time, 1 am, and wondered what Tyler was doing awake at such an hour. Josh then remembered that he himself was also awake, and shouldn’t be, so he had nothing to say about it. Tyler accepted the friend request a couple minutes later, and as Josh went to send a message, Tyler beat him to it.

**hello wht r u doing up at such an hr?**

_Hey, I could say the same to you, you know!_

**v tru, v tru. Staying up this late is normal 4 me. u?**

_Ye, bad habit to break, unfortunately._

**ah I see. 4 me its more of twitching around 2 much to get comfy n sleep**

_Oh, that sucks, I’m sorry you have to deal with that._

**pls dont pity me im used to it. it doesnt bug me as much it sounds from my complaining**

_Ok, I’m sorry._

**its fine dw man**

Josh hesitated replying, no longer sure what to say to keep the conversation going, and worrying that he had offended Tyler, even though the man said it was fine. Finally, he decided to move and change topics.

_So you’re in a band?_

**ye just a small thing i started w/ friends u know?**

_That’s cool, how many members do you have?_

**jst me chris on drums n nick on bass**

_What do you play?_

**oh uh whatever else needs 2 b played? Mostly piano n sing but also keytar n synth. ive been learning ukulele recently i want to incorporate that but i havent figured it out yet**

_Oh wow, you sound very talented. I can only drum, and not very well._

**u drum??? Thats sick!**

_Lol, it’s not really, I’m self-taught._

**well since ive never heard u play my opinion is ur great until i hear otherwise**

**hey u should come see my band play sometime. we have a show this weekend if ur available**

_I’d love to! Where is it?_

               Tyler gave Josh the details and they said goodnight. Suddenly Josh was nervous to see Tyler again, and he couldn’t really figure out why. Tyler seemed like a nice enough person, and Josh found that he was overly-eager to spend more time with him. Josh also secretly wanted to learn more about Tyler’s Tourette, but he didn’t want to pry, or seem like he was only interested in Tyler because of his Tourette. Josh was just naturally curious, but he was also curious about who Tyler was aside from the Tourette. He decided rather than pry information from Tyler, and give the wrong impression, he would do his own research online.

               Josh opened up google on his phone, typed in “tourettes” and clicked on the video tab. The first two videos looked like documentaries, and the next 3 seemed to be vlog style videos. Josh clicked on the second documentary at random, and dived in.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jylZh39mL6s  
> Here's a link to the video I had Josh watch. Well sort of, when I wrote this chapter, this was the video that came up when you searched "tourettes" but it's not anymore, and it even seems to be taken down from youtube. This is a video with a different title, someone stole about half the video an reposted it, but it's the good half, if you're interested in watching.  
> I have about half of the second chapter written, please let me know if you'd like me to keep going!


End file.
